In European patent application 0 571 308 a method for processing received postal items is described in which, for each one of a plurality of received postal items, at least one pattern is recorded from the received postal item, recorded information representing the at least one recorded pattern is generated, and the received postal item is processed in accordance with processing instructions represented by the information recorded from the postal item.
Also disclosed in this document is an apparatus for processing received postal items, equipped with a registration assembly for recording patterns from received postal items and for generating recorded information representing the recorded patterns, and a processing structure connected to the registration assembly for processing received postal items in accordance with processing instructions represented by the information recorded from the postal items.
The recording of a pattern is for example carried out by scanning a bar-code pattern on a document or an envelope and the processing includes the sorting and routing of documents to different remittance processing devices responsive to coded information obtained by scanning the bar-code pattern of the respective envelope.
Direct integrated processing of received mail provides efficiency advantages in that it eliminates the need of handling batches of mail between successive processing operations. However, there is a need of efficiently preparing and maintaining records of incoming mail which can serve as a log for data regarding received mail. For example, in some organizations all envelopes in which mail has been received are stored for some time so that any items or data in or on these envelopes can be retrieved if necessary. It is also common practice to prepare lists of mail which has been received, but in combination with integrated processing of received mail, this entails the problem that items which have gone astray during the processing are missed.